...is humanity fully alive
(irenaeus, i think.)
i was walking home in the heat and the sun, the sweat and the grime, and my head starting putting these words together:
sometimes I feel heavy with life
saturated
the way a girl dancing in a thunderstorm gets soaked
or the way a soft rag sinks into hot, soapy, sweet-smelling water.
full to the brim, and spilling over, with life
all of it
deeply aware of the wounded-ness of humanity, the wounds that have torn down deep in every single soul
and simultaneously
deeply aware of the countless beauties this world unceasingly flings into the air, the countless moments of holiness contained in each person’s breath-in, breath-out.
so deeply aware, even if I tried to close my eyes against it all, I would see it—life.
life, with all its paradoxes:
in which every genuine smile is precious
in which volatile tension and potential violence pulses in the air between two angry men
in which a woman realizes she must love herself before she can fully love her loved ones
in which another woman, once strong, is now at the mercy of her confusion, grasping onto others’ words or ideas as anchors in a bewildering sea of reality and non-reality
in which a little girl’s chestnut-colored hair fluffs and floats in the wind she creates by determinedly charging through the hot summer air.
this fullness is one of the most significant blessings I’ve experienced
more than any academic success, more than any man’s love, more than the joy of wrestling reality into words, more than the pleasures of oil paint on canvas or light hitting unexposed film, more than the bundle of chaos-love that is family, more than any happy memory or hope for the future
more significant than these things, or perhaps, the culmination of these things,
is the weighty realization of being wholly and fully alive.
